Norway plans to cull more than two-thirds of its wolf population

dude norway has no forests, land is all steap mountains fragmented by fjords, only in southeast there is little suitable wolf land, nothing compared to minnesota.

Most farmers in East Norway don't believe the official numbers on the wolf population, due to personal experiences with seeing wolves, and having animals killed by wolves.

I'm curious myself; I've heard separate stories of people in different regions seeing large packs of wolves (10-20 individuals) and also observing wolves crossing the road at night, etc. It would be nice to know more about how the official count as been made, because I'm skeptical that there are less than 70 wolves in the entire country. Large areas of Eastern Norway are largely uninhabited, and it doesn't really make sense that there are so many observations in populated areas.

The Sami people would have been about 100K population.

Norway now is almost 100x that.

+ Roads, airports, farms, domesticated animals etc.

I don't know specifically about the Sami, but the aboriginals in most places did not domesticate animals or have any serious agrarian practices.

That said, I can't understand the logic behind this cull.

> […] positive effect on the wolves teaching them that they get shot if they go near the sheep. Culls don't teach the wolf packs anything.

Do canines really learn that fast? I have always imagined that it takes verbal communication of some kind to pass on complicated knowledge to the next generation, and most knowledge canines possess is evolutionarily passed on, which is a really frickin' slow process unless you intentionally breed them one way or the other.

The traditional way the Sami people manage wolves is by systematically killing all of them. The method they do this is that whenever anyone finds any prints on the snow, they encircle the area, laying a kind of "streamer" that smells like people (so wolves don't want to approach it), constantly reducing the area until the wolfpack is trapped in a small enough area that they cannot hide or escape and can be slaughtered.

The reindeer herding areas of Lapland have no wolves, and have not had any for any long period during recorded history. The Sami claim the right to kill all wolves on their territory despite environmental legislation and their endangered status as part of their unalienable rights as indigenous people.

> we should be trapping them and redistributing them

European wolves routinely travel 60-80km a day for food, and since they are very social (pack oriented) hunters, a lone wolf (forced away from the pack, for what ever reason) can travel many hundreds of kilometers per week in search of other packs, new hunting grounds etc.

Meanwhile, Norway is full of hill farming in areas suitable for wolves.

I can talk about the livelihoods of people and families that have been decimated by the increase in the wolf population in Sweden, but instead I will say that many of these people would rather risk a jail sentence and hunt them themselves than try to convince the government to do anything about it.

> This is sad.

Agreed.

On paper yes, in reality no. There is a high chance of basically trashing the national economy of that is spent, depending on what effect it would have on the exchange rate etc.

The count is indeed a very disputed number precisely because wolves roam across the borders between Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Those who suffer damages from wolves often claim that the number of wolves is actually much larger. Conservationists offer smallest numbers.

I don't know if Norway is so huge. Land area is about 300 000 km, for Americans: about three-quarters of Montana.

It appears in the local press that sheep farmers are mainly the ones pushing for this.

I don't think the wolf has ever been a problem up north.

Nah, this is a local issue in the counties near Oslo.

The decision is not even made centrally, but left to the counties.

You can bet your behind that they were leaned on heavily by local farmers.

Wolves can easily get over a 6 ft fence. How would you contain them in a "private forest"?

I'm not familiar with the details of Norway, but the Nordic countries have so called "everyman's rights" which among other things say that owners of forests can't restrict people from roaming in their (uncultivated) land. Building a fence around your forest would most likely not be allowed.

There are no private forests in Norway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam#Norway